Shooting with a snoot or projector attachment unlocks a level of light control most setups simply can’t match. Mark Wallace puts that to the test in a recent studio session, building off a lighting guide created by his colleague and then pushing into entirely original territory.
Coming to you from Mark Wallace, this inventive video starts with Wallace working through two-light setups using a pair of Amron 300C hot lights and a snoot, also called a projector attachment. The snoot focuses light the way a slide projector does, and the shutters on its sides let you cut the beam precisely where you want it. Wallace walks through a key detail beginners often miss: everything inside the snoot is upside down and backwards, so controlling the bottom means pushing on the top, and controlling the right means working the left side. Once that clicks, shaping light with one of these becomes a lot more intuitive. He also drops in a cookie, a cut-out pattern that projects shapes onto the subject or background, and demonstrates how swapping patterns creates completely different looks.
The light metering section is where things get genuinely useful. Rather than bouncing back and forth between shooting and adjusting, Wallace uses a handheld light meter to lock in a one-stop difference between his key light and his fill, which comes from an octabox standing in for the large silk. He meters the key light first, stores the value, then uses the delta EV function to compare it against the fill side. When the difference reads 1.2 stops, he knows he’s right where he wants to be. From there, he shows how to use the meter to dial in the correct settings for shooting at f/1.2 with an 85mm f/1.2 lens, adjusting ISO and shutter speed on the meter itself rather than trial-and-erroring through it on camera.
What Wallace doesn’t stop at is simply replicating the original work. His model had sent over inspirational images, and the second half of the session is about building something original using the same tools. He swaps in a leaf-pattern cookie to throw complex shadows across Sandra’s face and body, then shifts to a different setup entirely: an octabox placed almost behind the subject, paired with a black subtraction panel to push one side of her face into shadow. That combination produces high-contrast portraits with a depth that flat front lighting never would. Because the camera’s built-in meter would have badly exposed that kind of scene, he meters manually by pointing the lumosphere directly at the light source. The images from that final setup are worth watching the video just to see. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Wallace.